In fact, coal has been on an irreversible decline for years because alternatives like wind, solar, and natural gas are cleaner and cheaper. Building and running new wind and solar farms is now cheaper than just running existing coal plants in many places.

Trump’s newly announced climate plan for coal-fired power plants will neither reverse nor even slow coal’s steady decline. In fact, since the plan is built around pushing coal plants to use coal more efficiently, it will slightly speed up the decline — according to EPA’s own analysis.

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EPA concedes that absent any new climate rules, market forces will cause coal production for the electric power sector to drop 20 percent by 2025. But EPA also concludes that under Trump’s plan, it would drop as much as 24 percent.

So coal is not coming back nor does any serious analyst in or out of the Trump administration believe such nonsense. Yet Trump traveled to West Virginia to offer more false hope.

In one part of the speech, Trump’s con job entered the realm of cruelty.

Trump’s claim, however, about how both he and the coal industry have supposedly made West Virginia incredibly successful is wrong. He asserts the state was “one of the last” economically before he was elected, but now “West Virginia on a per capita basis is one of the most successful GDP states in our union.”

Remember I was here just before the election and I brought a couple guys into a room and I said fellas, supposing we teach you a new skill, supposing we teach you like how to make little widgets or gidgets or gadgets. These are big, strong coal miners. They said “sir, we want to dig coal.” I said “I agree with you. I agree.” Right. Remember that? Their grandfathers did it, their fathers did it. It’s incredible and it’s really happening. We are back. The coal industry is back.

Trump’s words are met with cheers from the West Virginian crowd in response to him saying there’s no need to try to help them or the state in any way — with training programs of any kind — because he’s brought back the coal industry.

Except he hasn’t. And he can’t. And his own EPA has conceded that reality.